Pasinex Resources has announced a maiden mineral resource estimate for its 50%-owned Pinargozu Zinc Project in southern Turkey. CSA Global (UK) has estimated a resource of 200,000 tonnes averaging 31% zinc, which equates to 61,600 tonnes of contained zinc metal or approximately 135,700,000 pounds.
Pasinex says three-quarters of the resource tonnage is oxide at an average grade of 29% zinc and one quarter being zinc sulphides at an average grade of 35% zinc with additional silver credits.
Pasinex president and CEO Steve Williams said: “This result now formally underpins our high-grade zinc production and direct ship operation (DSO) for the next few years. We have found that mining is the best way to explore the potential of this extraordinary deposit.
“Underground development routinely exposes additional mineralisation outside the defined resource volumes. We will now focus aggressively on resource expansion and discovery. Specifically, new underground drives are planned to get into the best locations for underground exploration drilling.”
Since the ‘effective date’ of June 30, 2017, the tonnage of the resource estimate has been depleted by approximately 20,000 tonnes of high-grade direct shipping material, mined at a rate of 150 tonnes per day, or about 60,000 tonnes per year.
Pasinex took the decision in 2015 to proceed to production not based on a feasibility study of mineral reserves demonstrating their economic viability and technical feasibility. As a result there is an increased risk of failure.
The resource is categorised as inferred due to factors including high variability in bulk densities, locally poor core recoveries especially in some oxide drill intersections, uncertainty over stope depletion volumes, and, in some areas, drill-hole spacing. All these issues are being addressed with a view to improving the classification of the resource.
Regional and near-mine exploration will focus particularly on the nearby Akkaya prospect using a new structural lineament analysis of the Horzum Zinc Trend by Murphy Geological Services in Ireland.
Pasinex is working closely with its consultants to interpret the results of recent drill-core resistivity and conductivity measurements with the goal of building a much more robust geophysical model of the Horzum Zinc Trend.
The team is researching the use of ionic-leach technology, which maybe a way to 'see through' transported alluvial fans which spill into steep canyons at the highly-prospective intersection of cross-faults with the sub-crop of the prospective carbonate host-rock.
Pasinex is shipping directly to zinc smelter/refiners from its mine site in Turkey. The company has a strong technical management team with many years of experience in mineral exploration, mine development and production.
The Pinargozu mine is included in the 50-50 company, Horzum Arama Isletme AS, which is a corporate joint venture between Pasinex and Turkish mining house, Akmetal Madencilik San ve Tic AS, one of Turkey’s largest family-owned conglomerates with the nearby past-producing Horzum zinc mine.
Pasinex